Second paragraph of third chapter:

By the time Tolkien was at Exeter College, he was a committed smoker, mostly smoking a pipe but sometimes cigarettes. Smoking was socially acceptable back then and a lot cheaper than it is today, and Tolkien was most happy when with his fellow students talking and smoking late into the evening.

One of those books of Tolkieniana that I picked up ages ago for a pound on the remainder shelves. Aspects of Tolkien’s life and writing (but mainly his life) are packaged into short, thematic, well-illustrated chapters, though the presentation confusingly alternates between the roughly chronological and the more broadly cultural. There wasn’t much here that was new to me, but it might do for the sort of reader who doesn’t want to tackle Carpenter or one of the other biographies. You can get it here.

This was the shortest book that I had acquired in 2017. Next on that pile is Giants at the End of the World, by Johanna Sinisalo.